ECOL 3500/L - General Ecology

This course is designed to give you an appreciation of the complexity and simplicity of natural systems. Lectures will be presented in both a traditional classroom setting, and often in field locations throughout Costa Rica. This course is designed to prepare you for advanced courses in ecology such as population and community ecology, behavioral ecology, limnology, and systems ecology. By the end of this course, you should have a better understanding of system structure and regulation at the levels of organisms, populations, communities, and ecosystems. You should be able to think in both a holistic and reductionist framework and utilize these perspectives to examine novel situations. This background will provide you with the tools to evaluate environmental problems confronting society, and understand how to conserve and/or manage systems for future generations.